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How to bring efficiency to your company's financial processes?

If you notice that your administrative processes are starting to hinder your business, it's high time to take action and eliminate the ‘waste.’ Such improvement processes are challenging, but they translate into greater efficiency and lower operating costs over time. Once your processes are redesigned, you can take concrete steps toward greater efficiency.

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Streamlining financial processes before automating them is crucial, as highlighted by Wim Van Bael, director of the shared service center of the Renewi Group, in FD Magazine, and he is absolutely right. Sometimes, processes within the finance department have become unnecessarily complex over the years, primarily because issues needed quick fixes or out of sheer habit.

How can you make financial processes lean? Here are 5 practical steps to help you achieve that!

1. Master-data management

Ensure that your data are consistent and streamlined across different entities (customers, items, suppliers, chart of accounts, etc.). Proper numbering and naming make it easy to find customers or suppliers under the same name or number in each entity.

2. Start with e-invoicing

E-invoicing will become the standard for both incoming and outgoing invoices from 2026, for example, through Peppol: the European standard format. Depending on your system context, there are various ways to approach e-invoicing.

Want to learn more about how to start with e-invoicing in practice?

3. Automate sales invoices 

Make the process of creating sales invoices as seamless as possible by integrating with your existing system architecture. Even if you're using different systems for order processing, invoicing, and accounting, you can integrate them into one ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) package.

4. Optimize the purchase process

Utilize technology such as Optical Character Recognition, or OCR for short. This technique allows computers to 'read' letters, numbers, and punctuation from an image or photo. Apply OCR recognition to purchase invoices or implement an approval flow as described below to achieve a significant gain in efficiency. To do this, first map out your process and stakeholders for incoming invoices.

5. Simplify credit notes with a mobile app

Enable a mobile app for expense reporting to simplify the process for both employees and the accounting department. Integration with your ERP ensures quick and automatic processing.

Growing business? Also consider these important aspects

Consolidation

Do you have multiple entities and work in different systems? Then you likely have a lot of manual work for consolidation and reporting: individual reports in Excel, unstructured data, etc. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central offers solutions for internal invoicing or goods transfers.

Currency management

Easily work with different currencies by using a currency feature in your ERP. Various exchange rates can be set so that both incoming and outgoing invoicing, as well as your reporting, are conducted in the correct currency.

Scalability and flexibility

  • Ensure that your ERP system can grow with your business and provide support for local regulations.

  • Whether in terms of entities or employees, it's best to choose a scalable setup for your ERP. Do you have 20 entities or more than 100? It's possible to structure this so you can comply with local regulations while maintaining financial oversight of the group.

  • You can also set up different user profiles in your ERP. As long as your company is relatively small, some approvals may occur manually, such as via email, but as you grow, you'll likely reach a point where approval flows become extremely helpful. Additionally, for separation of duties, it's important to establish user profiles properly in your ERP.

The Power of data and Power BI 

Data becomes truly insightful and easier to interpret when visualized. With the power of data analytics and Microsoft Power BI, companies can gain in-depth insights into their financial performance and consolidate this information into dashboards. By presenting financial performance visually, companies can gain better insights for strategic decision-making

Summary 

Improve your financial processes by:

  1. Starting with mapping out all processes.
  2. Streamlining these processes.
  3. Then automating them.

There are several concrete steps you can take, such as consistent data management, implementing e-invoicing, automating invoicing and approval processes, or integrating mobile apps. This not only leads to greater efficiency but will also lower your operational costs.

As a growing company with ambitions abroad, you should also focus on:

  • Simplifying your entities and systems.
  • Using a currency feature in your ERP system.
  • Having an ERP system that can grow with your business and support local regulations.

In short, by streamlining and automating financial processes, companies can become more efficient and better prepared for growth and changes in the market.

Important: knowledge of regional compliance

Thanks to NORRIQ's partnerships with local Business Central experts, we can act quickly. NORRIQ has a wide range of partners in Europe and the U.S., allowing us to provide solutions for most countries with thorough knowledge of the local market and legislation.

You can consolidate the financial measurable indicators of all your international entities into a BI dashboard. This way, you gather efficient group reporting while complying with local legislation.

Curious to learn more? We're happy to brainstorm with you!

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